Montana Ex-Guardsman Now Must Fight to Keep Senate Seat Given to Him

Senator John Walsh, Democrat of Montana, second from left, at a Senate National Guard Caucus breakfast in Washington. He was appointed last month to the seat vacated by Max Baucus and is running for election in November, hoping that his career in uniform remains an asset.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

PABLO, Mont. — After three decades in the Montana National Guard, including a combat tour in Iraq, John Walsh, the state’s newly appointed Democratic senator, still has a brush cut and military bearing and occasionally slips into soldier-speak, referring to the “civilian” world when discussing life inside and outside the political arena.

His career in uniform was a selling point when he was elected lieutenant governor in 2012, and it is supposed to be again when he tries to hold the Senate seat for his party in November, in a race that could help tip partisan control of the Senate. But his military background could prove less of an asset this time.

In late January, a Montana television station broke the news that Mr. Walsh had been reprimanded by the Army inspector general for using his leadership role in the Guard to urge other service members to join the National Guard Association of the United States, a private group that lobbies on behalf of guardsmen. At the time, he was running to become the group’s vice chairman.

Despite the issue, Gov. Steve Bullock named him last month to the seat vacated by the six-term senator Max Baucus, who became the American ambassador to China, and Democratic supporters hoped the move would elevate the profile of a first-term lieutenant governor. It took next to no time for the powerful Republican group American Crossroads to air an advertisement saying the reprimand raised questions about Mr. Walsh’s ability to lead.

Separately, some Republicans have criticized Mr. Walsh for dysfunction in a state emergency management division he oversaw as adjutant general of the Montana National Guard. (Mr. Walsh said he had cleaned up the long-troubled agency.)

Mr. Walsh released his 378-page service record, which is filled with plaudits and commendations, among them a Bronze Star. He rejected the idea that he had used his Guard service for any personal gain. He noted that the position he had sought was unpaid and that he was interested only in pushing for better equipment and care for Montana guardsmen.

“I can look in the mirror and know that I’m doing a good job,” he said. His own campaign spots have shown him dressed in camouflage and set against a background of helicopters and armored vehicles.

In an interview, he drew on his combat experience as he discussed the criticisms, remembering a day when he received an intelligence report saying that militants in Iraq had named him as a target.

Photo

Senator Walsh met military veterans studying at Montana State University during a visit in February.Credit
Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez/Bozeman Daily Chronicle

“People say to me, ‘Why would you get involved in politics?’ ” Mr. Walsh said, musing about the difference between negative campaign ads and sniper fire. “I had somebody trying to kill me.”

The Montana race is considered one of the most important in the nation this year as Republicans mount an aggressive, well-funded campaign to reclaim a Senate seat they have not held since 1913.

Despite the state’s image as a Big Sky bastion of low taxes, small government and libertarian values, Montana voters have a long history of electing Democrats to the Senate. In 2012, for example, Senator Jon Tester, a buzz-cut farmer, won a second term even as Montana voters swung for Mitt Romney by a nearly 14-point margin and elected a Republican businessman, Steve Daines, to his first term as the state’s sole congressman.

Mr. Daines is now running for the Senate. A former software firm executive who also worked in China for Procter & Gamble, he is selling himself as a counterweight to Democratic policies on health care, spending and development.

Mr. Daines has nearly $2 million to spend on the race, more than four times as much as Mr. Walsh’s campaign, according to federal campaign data. Public polls have put Mr. Walsh behind Mr. Daines by double digits, a tally that the Daines campaign said was consistent with its internal polling. While the two candidates face primary challengers, both are expected to prevail.

Mr. Daines and his campaign have kept their distance from the conservative attacks on Mr. Walsh’s time in the Montana National Guard, instead airing gauzy biographical ads that highlight his business experience and family roots in Montana. Democrats have lacerated Mr. Daines for casting votes with his Republican colleagues that precipitated the government shutdown, and supporting what they call draconian budget cuts.

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Supporters hoped Mr. Walsh’s appointment would raise the stature of a candidate who lacks the easy name recognition of a former governor or long-serving politician. Mr. Walsh said he would devote his attention to job growth, debt reduction, veterans and privacy issues.

But the appointment brought a flood of criticism. Montana Republicans slammed the move as a back-room political deal, and quickly released a web video calling him an insider and a beneficiary of cronyism.

“It was such an insider deal,” said Bowen Greenwood, executive director of the Montana Republican Party. “He has so little record with the people of Montana. So few people even know him.”

As the campaign intensifies, Mr. Walsh is juggling jobs as both a candidate and a new senator, simultaneously trying to introduce himself to voters and prove that he can do the job.

Here in Pablo, on a valley floor beneath a jawline of snowy mountains, they met with leaders from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and students from the tribes’ college, discussing invasive weeds and mussels, native-language programs and how federal money flowed to tribes.

Mr. Tester, the new chairman of the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee, played the gregarious older brother, discussing granular details of federal settlements with the tribes and bringing updates on how long-simmering struggles for money were playing out in Congress. Mr. Walsh mostly listened.

“Everyone’s talking to Jon, not to John,” one woman said.

At the end of one meeting, Ron Trahan, the chairman of the tribal council, gave Mr. Tester a framed map of the tribe’s lands, apologizing that he did not have one for Mr. Walsh. They would do something for him next time, he told the new senator.

While Mr. Tester, an organic wheat and barley farmer, said Mr. Walsh had “hit the ground running” in Washington, he said voter turnout and the right message would be critical to whether Mr. Walsh won in November.

Montana’s economy has improved, with an energy boom along its eastern plains helping to trim unemployment to 5.3 percent. But the rollout of the health care law has further soured voters on the Obama administration.

“They’re going to try to make him into something he’s not — he’s got to fight that and overcome that,” Mr. Tester said. “He’s somewhat untested, but Daines is in the same boat.”

Mr. Walsh, the son of a pipe fitter, grew up in the mining town of Butte, and was the first person in his family to graduate from college, according to his campaign biography. The way he sees it, his new Senate seat is a working job interview.

“It will give the citizens of Montana an opportunity to see what kind of senator I’ll continue to be,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on March 23, 2014, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Montana Ex-Guardsman Now Must Fight to Keep Senate Seat Given to Him. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe